A Ridgewood Education

     Following up on Paul's post regarding the value of mathematics in education, I was shown just how good a job the Ridgewood school system did with this when I got to college. As an architecture major, I was required to take two semesters of mathematics my freshman year, including one of calculus. I had taken pre-calculus my junior year in Ridgewood, and probability / statistics my senior year. Imagine my surprise when, after purchasing my college-level calculus book, it became apparent that 90% of the course work would be concepts and calculations that I had already learned in high school pre-calculus. It was only the last two weeks of the course, when we got into differential equations, that the course advanced beyond what I had learned at Ridgewood High School. My second semester of my freshman year, I took probability and statistics to fulfill my college math requirement. It was a 400-level, or senior level course. Again, approximately 50% of the work had been covered by Mr. Zitelli at RHS. About halfway through the semester, a group of students, all seniors, went to the professor and complained that the course work was advancing too fast for them to keep up. He replied that he didn't think that was the case, since the highest average in the class was being maintained by a freshman. Boy, did I get some dirty looks. The RHS curriculum also allowed me to breeze through two semesters of both physics and english composition. My RHS education allowed me devote more time to my architecture studies, and continues to serve me well to this day. Now, if only I had taken some auto shop, which is no longer even offered, I would be better off maintaining my cars!